The title is a play on the popular phrase "For Whom the Bell Tolls." It's fitting, I think - we, as a community, have been asked to provide feedback regarding something very important to all of us: the community, and the related & relevant activities, campaigns and activism officially taken on by Daily Kos (i.e., "officially" as in "under the orange banner, with the powers that be running point" vs. "unofficially" in terms of just heaping groups of Kossacks getting down, getting dirty and getting something done on their own with dKos as the common factor).
In a nutshell: Chris Bowers posted a diary letting us know more about what goes into the process behind selecting what topics are selected for action by The Powers That Be at Daily Kos, partly in response to a diary by David Mizner.
Since the beginning of 2012, I implemented a new strategy of choosing what we take action on that cedes significant editorial control to the Daily Kos community. Specifically, looking at recommends and Facebook likes / shares for every single diary posted on Daily Kos (and on our Facebook page), the campaigns and activism team here at Daily Kos tries to 1) find the topics that are trending within the Daily Kos community at any given moment and 2) work to generate actions on those topics.
And, yet, David's point wasn't lost on Chris or on
TPTB as a whole - there are other topics that don't meet the currently established threshold which might still be important. From a comment by
Susan Gardner,
Yes, most of us are more fond of Daily Kos than Facebook and Twitter. But the truth is, if we don't get the word out to a wider group of people—non-political junkies, in fact—we're not going to be effective.
That line got me thinking. And so, I replied - partly to clarify a much longer comment that I'd posted earlier. I tacked on this response:
It's more than simply social media and blogging. It's engagement - tying news & information together with good sources, pointing out what's wrong with bad ones, and providing clear information in digestible (but not bumper-sticker) bits that can be verbally communicated by the general public, the heretics, the unbelievers and the Great Unwashed (i.e., my cousins, and a couple of ferrets living down the road).
My thought is that by engaging once in a while on issues that don't necessarily reach certain current site threshholds or markers, but which engage particular communities in meaningful ways, you broaden the reach and impact of other campaigns as more interest is generated outside our normal "bubble."
Over the orange squiggledydoodle, I've posted my entire full-length comment. You can read it here, or in the original Chris Bowers piece, or both. Or not at all. My thoughts are simply my take on it - your input on the topic as a whole, with "you" as individuals as well as the entire community as a whole, is more important, so please jump in.
Thank you.
Namaste.
Here's the screed I posted as a comment, with my thoughts. One of the responses I initially received came from Clem Yeobright, who I think voiced a very valid concern about whether I was suggesting aborting our current system of community-based feedback. It's worth reading. I think my response will serve as a good "statement of intent" before reading my actual screed. I responded:
I think you're misreading what I'm suggesting.
The current methods by which TPTB select items for activism is based on finding elements that meet certain thresholds of popularity & impact. But those methods alone will create an eventual circle-jerk - possibly still a very effective one, but the purpose of this diary appear to be to ask how to be more effective - to help catch items and elements that are perhaps long, slow burning fuses which don't meet their existing thresholds but which are important to the community and could also help extend the reach, impact and effectiveness of our community.
Remember, we've got some diaries that post at odd times in the firehose of throughput - some might hit the rec list, but shortly be replaced by other popular trends like Pootie or Woozle diaries, or by a rant by Bob Johnson when Rex donates his socks to charity and then claims the deduction on his own return (where he also lists Bob as a dependent, I hear).
Some items that don't make the currently established thresholds are ones that might meet community standards of importance, and provide additional potential to expand the site's reach & potential effective impact overall, thus extending it's overall success.
Thus, there needs to be some adjustment to the thresholds as well as some way to help identify sub-threshold issues which also serve to grow the community & advance its agenda as a whole.
The Comment
There are varying degrees of importance.
Some types of community activism likely get noticed but relatively ignored, as they don't appear to directly contribute to campaigns or getting more, theoretically better democrats elected. But noting which ones may help reinforce the infrastructure, laying the groundwork for other issues and ideals to be pursued, will make a difference.
There are some types of actions that don't speak to a larger political form of activism yet are of key concerns to some groups; those, too, likely get at least a passing notice but aren't considered "actionable" in keeping with the overall vision and goal.
And some types of issues garner attention, and maybe some action, but aren't "big" enough to draw upon requisite pools of larger resources.
We have some specific "spinoff" segments to deal with some specifics - Daily Kos Elections, Daily Kos Labor, Mother Talkers, Street Prophets, Congress Matters, DKtv, Daily Kos Photo Coop.
And there's some specific groups that help with "smaller" issues, awareness & acknowledgements: KosAbility, Top Comments, Black Kos, Community Spotlight, IGTNT, Native American Netroots, dKos Quilt Guild... there are many more, of varying sizes and levels of participation.
Recently, one example of some intragroup community activism that achieved a small but measurable goal manifested in the Okiciyap Quilt Auction. That was a successful fundraising effort that garnered a large chunk of money for an important cause - it may not help more, better Democrats get elected, but it helped some people who needed help.
Although helping the people of the Cheyenne River Reservation wasn't done out of political activism, it is and continues to be a truly human, humanitarian effort that espouses some of the best principles of democracy - and Daily Kos, as well the primary objectives of the dKos vision & goal - benefit from the association.
Another example is the NOKXL Blogathon - part of serious climate reality activism. That was a community-coordinated effort that helped get the word out. Climate Change SOS, among other dK groups, helped fight that fight.
The point of this is that there may be a couple of ways to ensure that some of these other "mini-campaigns" don't get lost - the energy and impetus they generate isn't lost to other causes, issues or events: it's generated and "there" - people helping people and taking action, being the grassroots.
That's what we are. We're more than just a multivaried bunch of knuckleheads or keyboard commandos: we're a community of people from a myriad of backgrounds, "edumacation" and experiences that come together not simply for ranting or pooties & woozles or the latest (p)outrage...and not always, not solely for political activism.
But there's important "smaller" issues that aren't necessarily "small" nor are they unimportant. And those issues do, often, tie directly to the main primary purpose of the site.
Take NAN, for example. Native American Netroots isn't just raising the awareness of the community and public to Native American issues. It's also raising the issue of how to better help those communities, and in that pursuit it is looking to identify roadblocks: not all of which are roadblocks simply to Native Americans, or even to the wider communities of color, but issues that in one form or another affect EVERYONE.
Example? Sure - tying in Voting rights & voter disenfranchisement. That's a big issue, and it's also one that the Native American community could use some help with. There was a proposal for a panel touching base on the issue at a NN a couple years ago that could have benefited due to location & timing. It didn't make the cut - so the issues stayed under-noticed.
Yet it is an issue that could have significant impact on upcoming elections, off-year and not, if I understand even a small bit of what I thought navajo and Meteor Blades had mentioned about the issue.
We can't let issues like that hit the sidelines. The community can pick up the slack on some elements, and on others it will take the ball, run with it, score a touchdown and do a happy dance. But there needs to be a better way to analyze issues that may fall by the wayside, and check to see if there's a way to elevate them for some clear action to help even the occasional "small" causes along - keep them noticed, keep their spark alive and help them develop.
Not all of those causes will have larger, usually unnoticed or indiscernible ties to bigger issues, but some do.
And for those that do, recognizing those ties may help not only change the weighting of those issues, it could also help chart another path to attack whatever the wider issue at large is.
Drones - not a good thing. Voter disenfranchisement - ditto. Warrantless wiretapping. CISPA. Keystone XL. Space exploration. Alternative energy. Sustainability. Cradle-to-cradle manufacturing. Single payer.
Accountability for big banks, past political groups & presidents.
Torture. Human rights. Indigenous rights; tribal sovereignty.
Many issues, large and small, tie these things together.
Not all the obvious metrics work - at least, not until they are able to be applied to data sets turned on their sides and inclusive of the information, activities, and patient mapping of the consequences (intended and otherwise, known knowns and known unknowns, etc.).
Conclusion:
We need an assembled, dynamic list of topics that folks can provide feedback on, which can also have notes added that would help identify when, where and how there could be additional advantages. And sometimes, those advantages may only consist of "because we're human and it's the right thing to do" - not because it helps achieve a "greater' agenda.
Because that, in a very real aspect, is how we remain a community, and thus how we remain cognizant of and on track with the larger goals and vision of this site.
IMO. YMMV. (anyone still reading this...?) ;)